


Fallen Angels

by ssa_archivist



Category: Smallville
Genre: Angst, Crossover, Drama, Futurefic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2003-04-21
Updated: 2003-04-21
Packaged: 2017-11-01 04:59:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/352193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ssa_archivist/pseuds/ssa_archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Rift will begin to divide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallen Angels

**Author's Note:**

> This story is an addition to The Heaven and Hell Series; it is meant as a follow-up companion piece to "Sacrificing Angels" and is set as its sequel, so though it isn't necessary, it is recommended that story be read before this one, as this fic is not intended to stand on its own. 

## Fallen Angels

by Lexalot

<http://www.livejournal.com/users/lexalot>

* * *

Fallen Angels  
By: Lexalot 

Summary: The Rift will begin to divide. 

Rating: PG-13 

Disclaimer: How can anyone own these guys? Even the people who technically do own them don't own them, but they think they do, so to avoid their legal paperwork, I must state that I do not own them. However, off the record, we all know these guys answer to no one... unless they're in bed... which in my world, they most certainly would be. 

Inspiration and Reference: Music--"The Other Side" by David Gray, which can be heard at the end of the recent Smallville episode "Visitor"; some characters and events have been adapted from the Superman and Batman comic books as published by Warner Brothers and DC. 

WARNING: This material contains references to darkly dramatic themes and events from the preceding story; Some reader discretion advised. 

* * *

The artificial glow from the television accounted for more than half of the light in the dim surroundings. Cold gray marble floors with white and black spidery veins met a substantial blaze that licked at the inside of the chimney as it stoked in the fireplace. The flicker of flame and projected imagery combining together cast multifaceted shadows about the room. 

His expression was the same placid stone that paved most of the mansion and forged his path. 

An interruption came in the local news programming he had been studying so meticulously through veiled impassive faade. He didn't stir from his state, only watching with disguised intent as he had been all along. Even the words "Breaking News" held no higher fascination for him and his unblinking eye remained fixed and sedate. Slightly elevated interest when the report was announced as live and national, and then at the bottom of the screen, the location was revealed to be Metropolis. There was an anchorwoman sitting at a desk, who spoke in a most somber manner. 

"Lena Luthor, the five year-old daughter of LexCorp founder and CEO, Lex Luthor, died in a tragic accident just a few minutes ago." 

Indifference melted and before it could dissolve, a visual feed replaced the anchorwoman on the monitor and what Bruce saw shattered the ice. 

Footage rolled of a little figure falling from a sky-rise penthouse, and the camera followed the silhouette, faltering for a disoriented second right before impact upon the ground, the picture regaining focus to show the ghastly scene several hundred feet away on the cement sidewalk. 

Bruce sat forward in his seat and breathed a heavy sigh that whispered of appall. "Oh God." 

The taped incident finished, and then the footage looped and began again. It was horrifying to behold. It was worse to see it repeating like a nightmare that would be dreamt during every minute of sleep in hell--that image of Lex's beloved cherubim princess falling from the heavens to her death upon the earth. The idea of such a terrible loss opened the floodgates, and memories of his parents drowned his numb pain in sympathy. 

That was all it took. Bruce promptly shut off the television set and fled in quiet resolve. 

* * *

It had been almost three hours. Between the arrival of police and medical units and his departure from Clark as he donned Superman's mantle upstairs, Lex had lived this time as if it were an eternity. He stood in the elevator, descending into what seemed like forever. His eyes were glassy, coated with a thick layer of tears that hadn't the strength or will to break loose, while the white edges were stained pink on the inside. He fidgeted and paced in a pressurized frenzy, feeling trapped--trapped in his skin, trapped in his grief, and trapped in this metal box. 

Finally, the doors split open to the lower level of the condominium's grand complex where the parking garage was housed. Lex was ready to bolt for his car as the elevator doors parted, and before they were fully retracted, he squeezed his way out, desperate to escape the imprisonment of reality. 

He hadn't known what he would do or where he would go--he hadn't even given it any thought yet--but when his eyes rose from the asphalt ground, Lex broke his course of motion mid-step. There was a Rolls Royce idling directly in front of the elevator, and Lex's old friend Bruce Wayne was standing at its open door. His features were somewhat less sharp than usual, but keenly solemn, his demeanor reserved, but less typically than Lex knew him for being. 

"Lex." Bruce paused as Lex furrowed his brow, appearing very confused, either by Bruce's presence or his esoteric humanity. "They told me you were on your way down here." The soft measure in Bruce's voice, the impossibly warm tone with an alien sentimentality about it--Bruce knew. He had heard, and he had come, rushing to Lex's rescue. 

"Bruce." Lex breathed his name on a sigh of relief realizing why he was there, and then he demanded coarsely, "Get me the hell out of here, now!" 

And with that, as though he were trying to lose some ghost or invisible force chasing him, Lex impatiently ducked into the car. 

* * *

Lex hit Wayne Manor like the thunderstorm that had ravaged Metropolis for one hour and ripped his daughter away from him in one second. He marched up the majestic stairway, through the galleries and deep into the corridors of the mansion with a mentality resigned to either quell or induce self-destruction. Bruce followed calmly at a distance behind him, slowly catching up to Lex in his bedroom. Bruce waited patiently in the doorway while Lex disappeared into the adjoining bathroom with a determined and harried exhaustion worn upon his face. 

Bruce's eyes heavily dropped to the floor as he listened to the sounds of Lex's madness as it took hold. He heard Lex tear through the medicine cabinet, wipe everything out from the cabinet under the sink, and sift through the bathroom closet, all with an obsessive, disjointed agony about the chaos he was causing. His pandemonium having yielded nothing, Lex emerged from the bathroom to extend his search into Bruce's bedroom. Lex began opening drawers, rifling through Bruce's private and personal belongings like it was his own property. All the while, Bruce stood motionless in the doorway, hands tucked away in his pants pockets, allowing Lex his tantrum in the most awful gracious manner. Bruce's eyes squinted at Lex through pity and defenseless sorrow, dull sensations, slight sparks of emotion ignited by a rare compassion. 

It was an odd position for them both, but it was especially uncommon for Bruce to share a sentimental connection with someone, and for him to want to ease their suffering and accommodate their angst. Bruce knew how Lex felt. Bruce had been a child when he lost his parents; Lex was a father who had lost his child. Anything that hit too close to home was Bruce's real weakness, because where Bruce lived, that was what he held the most sacred. 

As Bruce stood by, a mute witness to Lex's deterioration, he mulled over the bleak, potential undoing this meant for Lex. Some morbid part of him wondered what this experience would do to Lex. Bearing in mind that they both contained endless capabilities for darkness of mind and soul, Bruce remembered--as if he could forget--what effect his own life-altering trauma had wrought upon him. He feared for Lex, because if Bruce had still had any fear in him, he would have feared for himself, knowing how his own personal tragedy warped him. But it was of no consequence anymore. Bruce didn't fear, and he didn't care, at least not about himself or how bad this psychosis of his had become, and he imagined whatever change this facilitated, whatever negative influence this had on Lex in time, eventually he wouldn't fear or care either. 

Bruce extracted himself from that morose train of thought when Lex had seemingly forsaken the self-driven quest to appeal to Bruce for help. The frustration creasing Lex's brow manifested as manic antagonism in Lex's blue eyes that had smeared gray with her ashes. Lex approached Bruce with all the restraint and charm of an interrogation. "Where are they?" His eyes flared with a crazed edge for an instant, then tamed against the silence. "What? You don't buy into pills anymore? How about the drugs they had you on when we were in high school? Don't tell me there isn't something just lying around!" Lex knew there had to be. Bruce had a developing problem with painkillers--side effect of his hazardous night job. Not only that, but there were probably prescriptions, mainly anti-depressants, from their teen years that Bruce kept refilling just to pacify the doctors who had believed he needed to take them to live a normal and stable life--but he had stopped taking them long ago, and Lex was well aware of this fact. "Valium, Prozac, Xanax, Codine, anything! Jesus, I'll settle for a bottle of Tylenol if I have to! Where are all those pharmaceuticals you're so fond of?" He had shouted the question at Bruce like a deranged lunatic. 

Unfazed by Lex's displaced animosity, Bruce blinked casually, a mask of serenity concealing the boy inside who recalled grieving so wretchedly that it was torturous to feel anything at all. Then, Bruce gazed into the tormented look on the face of his old friend and former lover only to recognize an affliction too nearly akin to his own past inconsolable turmoil. A brief silence spelled out Bruce's hesitation, and then with reluctant defeat, he catered to his companion's ailing will. His deep, throaty voice barely broke audible. "I'll get them for you." 

* * *

Lex was sleeping in his bed. Bruce just wasn't sleeping. 

Distraught shock mixed with a nominal dosage of medication as supervised by Bruce was keeping Lex catatonic. On occasion, Bruce would find him with his eyes open and vacant, his mind lost in some dark abyss at the recesses of his soul. Seeing Lex like this undid something in him. Lex had always been the one who attempted to spread life to him like it was a contagious infection. It never took though, not in any long-term way--Bruce had his own disease to contend with, and it preoccupied him mercilessly with no real hope for escape or cure. 

It had been two days since her death, and two nights since Bruce had been out to patrol the streets of Gotham. It was unprecedented on his part, and he had never intentionally neglected his duties like this before, but he felt his presence around Lex served a higher purpose. He was there for Lex now, and Clark had not been when it was important. It was a difficult choice to stand by, however, and Bruce was torn. He knew his reasons for staying in support of Lex were more selfish than he'd care to admit, but he also knew there were plenty of arguments to the contrary, and his two motivations clashed. Something would have to give soon, and Bruce feared it was coming when it came to his attention that Clark Kent was waiting at the front door to the Manor. 

Bruce met him face to face on the entrance hall floor. They were separated by a mere few feet, and as their eyes locked, Bruce saw something in Clark's eyes that he had felt too often doing his so-called heroic job, but Bruce was fairly certain he had not exhibited it for all to see the way Clark laid it bare in his features. His split sympathies notwithstanding, Bruce maintained a superior, heartless level to his voice. "What do you want?" 

Clark faltered, then solemnly confessed. "I'm looking for Lex. He's here, isn't he." It wasn't a question, but it was meant to sound like one. 

Bruce didn't know if it was X-ray vision or intuition, but he didn't like the idea that it was the former. "He doesn't want to see you." 

Dissatisfied with the response, Clark's stare shifted focus and his pupils dilated. Then his eyes widened for a second before growing maudlin. Bruce turned to follow Clark's concentrated gaze and found the corner of the wall up on the second floor gallery. Lex--he must have been up there, listening, aching, struggling. The desire to join his distraught lover was plain in Clark's eyes as was his distress, hurt from the incident first and now by the fact that Lex hid from him. 

His responsibility not forgotten, Bruce dispensed with his understanding and various points of view to sanction Lex's crucial mourning period. Drained of voluntary emotion, his timbre sharpened roughly like metal. "Are you going to get out, or do I have to throw you out?" 

Clark's wounded look traveled hard to Bruce again, and out of respect for both Bruce and Lex, he succumbed with disappointment. "I'm going." 

No sooner did Clark turn his back than Bruce turned his, Clark on his way out the door, Bruce on his way up to confront Lex. 

As Bruce stepped behind the corner to the sight of Lex leaning limply against the wall, eyes fixed on some low random spot, they heard the door shut with a thick wooden sound that resonated in the empty space. Since this was the first time Lex had ventured this far from the bedroom, Bruce held his tongue, thinking silent words the best ones until spoken ones came. 

A moment passed, an ocean of thought. 

"Sometimes, I wish he were dead." Sincere words in a macabre tone, as if Lex were waxing grim philosophic. 

Bruce winced reflexively as if that had driven a dagger into his heart. Nothing could have prepared him for Lex saying that--that dreadful sentiment was part of what bound and drove Bruce secretly, in this situation and every other. He opened his eyes narrowly and almost growled out his words. "No, you don't." Wisdom, the horrific irony of hindsight channeling through his insistence--Bruce had wished his father dead once, just once in his life, in childish anger after an argument, and that very night, he got his wish, when his father was murdered along with his mother, and he would spend the rest of eternity knowing he had never really meant it... Bruce hated that he and Lex were so alike, now more than ever. 

"Lex," he said heavily in a deliberate tone. "It was an accident." 

"So was my meeting Clark. There are no accidents, Bruce." Lex wasn't sure if he was just starting to believe that or if he always had. 

"He made a hard decision, and as cruel and unfair as it is, it was the right choice, and he's going to have to live with all that for the rest of his life." Batman's harsh dose of bitter reality coming out Bruce's mouth. "I've been in his position before, Lex. I'll be in that position again. Clark is only beginning to learn what it means to be in this line of work." A touch of guilt playing the devil's advocate, but Bruce couldn't take either side without admitting familiarity with the sting of both. He remained devoutly in Lex's corner, no matter how objective or subjective his own stance, but that last note had rung sour in Lex's ears. 

"Don't you dare defend him to me! Don't give me some 'poor Clark' bullshit! He's alive and she isn't!" Lex realized then that Bruce was staring at him sadly with a compassion that was insufferable to see coming from Bruce of all people. That was the moment Lex knew Bruce was treating him like a victim he had to rescue. "Are you trying to save me, Bruce?" Lex was incredulous at Bruce's simultaneous arrogance and ignorance. "You and your charities, and your 'Batman'--You need to save somebody? Why don't you worry about saving yourself!" He felt Bruce flinch internally noticing ripples of it break on the surface, and he wondered what could have possibly inspired such vulnerability in his callous companion. "Why do you care all of a sudden, anyway?" 

Bruce felt challenged, threatened with that sacred door gaping wide open, and his solace was compromised by his own character flaw, forcing him to reseal the cracks and vigilantly guard the last thing in him to live or feel. At that instant, Bruce's expression glazed over listless and blank, and he regrettably made the conscious decision to detach, returning more visibly to his former and usual self. "If you don't want me to care, I won't." 

That night, Bruce went back to work. 

* * *

A granite angel knelt before him, a child, the image chiseled in her vague likeness as per his specifications for the headstone. Her sculpted face divinely serene, her form preserved forever innocent--Lena was Lex's loss, but innocence was long lost to all three of them, and the broadening gap in that chasm continued to carry them farther away from it. Lex felt himself falling into that rift, and he had the unsettling notion that even the bottom wouldn't break his fall. His descent would be just like Lena's, but his would never end--he was damned to suffer that destiny and know that salvation would never come for him. Lena hadn't been saved, and he wouldn't be either. 

In some mocking twist of fate, the sun was shining brightly--the day of her funeral, and Lex's sun was shining, but he wasn't sure if it was for him. 

Bruce had accompanied Lex there. In fact, Bruce was his only company, as the services had been private, off-limits to press and spectators, and so his only guest stood in black sunglasses and suit several feet behind allowing him space to grieve. Lex had simply told Bruce he was coming, and though it seemed like there was still an ulterior altruism to Bruce's motives, Lex deluded himself into believing Bruce simply had nothing better to do with his days. 

He was peering down at the petite statue, reverence and misery holding him firmly in place, unable to walk away yet. The ceremony was over an hour ago, and he wanted desperately to delay leaving her on into infinity. Thus far, he had remained blessedly undisturbed, but then a tall shadow skulked across the grass towards the open grave with the ornate little coffin still above ground, a single white rose perched atop the pearly marble. His uninvited visitor approached gently, and as Lex made no move to stop him, it became clear he was not unwelcome. 

When he came to be at Lex's side, Lex took a quick and painful glance over at him. Clark looked normal and healthy on the surface, which Lex had come to expect, but in Clark's eyes he saw the inner agony he was enduring--the burden of the last four days he had born swam in the expressive sea of his eyes. Clark was clutching a handful of sunflowers in his right hand. Lena had loved sunflowers. They were her favorite because of her father's fondness for them. 

Lex felt the hole his disillusionment with Clark had torn in him, but realized nevertheless, he felt he needed Clark to fill that void, which had been ripped wider in his absence. He sensed Clark's will to speak as it made him think the better of keeping quiet. It was up to Lex to bridge the barrier. 

After indulging an uneasy moment of silence as he fought back tears in this doubly trying situation, Lex was ready to say what Clark had to hear. 

"It wasn't your fault, Clark." Even though Lex knew that was the truth, he still only half believed it. "I just need some time." 

Overwhelmed by both relief and sorrow, racked by turbulent feelings, Clark could only nod to emotional excess in understanding. 

* * *

She was falling. He had been reaching for her, and she had just fallen. She had slipped before he was close enough, and now she was falling through the air. She was screaming his name, calling out to him for help. But he wasn't coming. Her descent continued uninterrupted, no sign of him anywhere to be found. And all that was in his power to do was watch as it happened. She was a second from impact, and that was when he was jolted awake. 

His eyes shot open and an aftershock coursed through his body. He felt the heavy arm curled around him from behind tighten protectively. 

Clark must have been concerned by the tremor that had roused him, because he inched closer and spoke with care. "What's wrong?" 

It was the first time he had the nightmare, and it was his first night back with Clark, and it was... "Nothing." 


End file.
